Tagged: News of the World

After a day of high drama in the Commons culture, media and sport committee (custard pies included) during which Murdochs Senior and Junior amusingly and inadvertently managed an uncanny resemblance to The Simpsons characters Mr Burns and his grovelling aide Smithers, Rupert Murdoch insisted on delivering a statement. And I couldn’t resist reproducing it in full here for you to ponder over. Or laugh at. Whichever you want, really:

My son and I have come here with great respect for all of you, for Parliament and for the people of Britain whom you represent.

This is the most humble day of my career.

After all that has happened, I know we need to be here today.

Before going further, James and I would like to say how sorry we are for what has happened – especially with regard to listening to the voicemail of victims of crime.

This is such a fast-moving and ridiculously complicated story that in all probability this post will be completely out of date the second it goes up – bear with me!

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last two weeks, you can’t fail to have noticed the distinctly disturbing rumblings emanating from the depths of the Wapping HQ of Rupert Murdoch’s News International media empire. Or at least that’s where the rumblings started. Despite an investigation into whether the News Of The World had hacked the phones of various celebrities and politicians that goes back almost a decade, it seems that News International assumed they could keep the worst of it well and truly hidden.

Hidden until now, that is.

Since Nick Davies and his team at TheGuardian revealed at the beginning of July that the News Of The World had engaged in some truly repellent behaviour in the shape of hacking the mobile phones of the families of high-profile murder victims, these long-standing rumblings have turned into a massive and seemingly unstoppable shitstorm which has managed to drag not only News International but also the government and the Metropolitan Police into its increasingly unpleasant wake.